A year after the Hamas attack shattered this Israeli community, going home still feels impossible

KFAR AZA, Israel (AP) — On a sun-dappled day in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Liora Eilon stood at the spot where her son was killed. She stooped to pick a figurine from the pile of belongings scattered around an abandoned home nearby.

“Every time we come here, Tal leaves us a little message,” the 71-year-old said, turning over the plastic soldier in her hands.

It has been a year since Hamas militants stormed into this community within sight of the border fence surrounding Gaza. Eilon’s 46-year-old son, Tal, who was the Kfar Aza civilian defense commander, was killed in the early moments of the attack, as he ran to the kibbutz armory to grab a weapon.

Now living in a university dormitory in Israel’s north, Liora Eilon wonders if she’ll ever return home to this place, seared into Israeli history for that day of mass death, when the militants killed some 1,200 people in southern communities and took about 250 others hostage. The attack sparked an ongoing Israeli campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 41,600 Palestinians and laid waste to much of the territory.

“How can I trust the government who abandoned me here, who betrayed me, promised me that my family was safe here?” she said. “The government wants us to go back to Kfar Aza, but I need more to feel safe.”

Only about 50 of Kfar Aza’s 1,000 residents have returned. They live among the skeletons of houses burned by explosives, riddled with bullet holes or reduced to rubble by tank shells during the battle that raged for days.

The others are scattered in dorms and hotels further north. The Associated Press spoke to a dozen residents who shared feelings of extreme vulnerability to future attack and deep misgivings about Israel’s military and government, and the Palestinians on the other side of the fence.

Some wondered whether such a scarred place could ever be lived in at all.

“Are we going to live inside a memorial? Are we going to see a plaque every few meters, he was killed here and he was killed here?” asked Zohar Shpack, 58, who has returned and serves in the civilian defense squad. “I don’t know yet.”